Human Rights Watch submits a statement to the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee for its hearing, “Is it Time to Lift the Ban on Travel to Cuba?” Human Rights Watch believes lifting the travel ban represents an essential step towards ending a US policy that has failed for decades to have any impact whatsoever on improving human rights in Cuba.

Raúl Castro's government has locked up scores of people for exercising their fundamental freedoms and allowed scores more political prisoners arrested during Fidel Castro's rule to languish in detention. Rather than dismantle Cuba's repressive machinery, Raúl Castro has kept it firmly in place and fully active.

On November 6, Cuba’s most prominent blogger, Yoani Sánchez, together with blogger Orlando Luís Pardo Lazo, were abducted by three men. Sánchez and Pardo were forced into an unmarked vehicle, beaten, and threatened by their captors before being released onto the street.

In a crucial vote this week, the Organization of American States could decide whether to lift Cuba's almost 50-year suspension from the key regional body. Such a move would be bad for civil society in Cuba and bad for the OAS.

The Organization of American States should not lift the suspension of Cuba as a participating full member until it ends its systematic denial of fundamental freedoms for Cubans.

Serious human rights violations in Azerbaijan, China, Cuba, Russia, and Saudi Arabia undermine their candidacies for the May 12, 2009 election to the United Nations Human Rights Council, a global coalition of international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) said in a letter released today.

Heads of state gathered at the Summit of the Americas should work together to create a new, unified approach to Cuba that will be more effective toward dismantling Cuba's repressive machinery, Human Rights Watch said today.

President Barack Obama's order ending restrictions on Cuban-Americans' travel and remittances to Cuba is a major break from an ineffective and unjust policy, but the US government should take further steps to adopt a new approach toward Cuba.